The Bun Field

This collection of five short comics stories by new talent Amanda Vähämäki is drawn together with an intriguing disjointed rhythm and delicious pencil-smudged style, and infused with a sense of abbreviated adolescence and a kind of grey sky banality. On the surface the stories are characterized by a surreal ebb-and-flow, but each also possesses a deep sense of foreboding and hurt, and maintains a biting sense of humor.

The Bun Field is Vähämäki’s first graphic novel, which has been published in several languages. In this story, a young girl dreams of a dinosaur eating Donald Duck; wakes to find a bald, hulking stranger sharing her breakfast; leaves to take a car trip with a bear; falls and breaks a tooth, to have it replaced by an impatient dentist—from his dog’s mouth no less; and pays back the favor by plowing a field of buns. Likewise, young people and anthropomorphic animals commingle in dreamy landscapes throughout the other tales collected in this edition, performing mundane tasks that are skewed with an absurd and fantastic edge. What do you get when you mix fish guts, jungle gyms, stamps, barmaids, soda pop and burning cities?

Vähämäki’s unique ideas are equally matched by her tactile drawings, creating a palpable world that is fresh and compelling. The Bun Field and Other Stories comprises an introduction to the work of a new artist not to be missed.